Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2020 i Soundings

Irecently learned about the dramatic rescue of a man who had suffered a heart attack in the cabin of his Sea Ray. Thanks to the quick and intelligent actions of a few boat owners in the same harbor that day, the gentleman who had a brush with death is now able to thank the people who saved his life. Dennis Dillon and his wife, Tricia, were on the hook in New York’s Port Jefferson Harbor when he went into cardiac arrest. Tricia began CPR and yelled for help. Josh Stein of Connecticut was on a nearby mooring aboard his Beneteau Swift Trawler when he heard Tricia’s cries. Stein and his fiancé, Dr. Elizabeth Nadal, had traveled to the area to attend an event for members of the Saugatuck Harbor Yacht…

Outside of James Bond movies, David Snediker had never before seen a Venetian water taxi. The boats are practically nonexistent on America’s waterways, having been built for Italian canals. Intermezzo was purchased in Venice, Italy, as a functional water taxi by a woman who kept the boat in Sag Harbor, New York, for a few years. But classic wooden boats are demanding vessels, so it wasn’t long before the elegant craft required serious maintenance. In 2007, she ended up at Snediker’s boatbuilding shop in Pawcatuck, Connecticut, Snediker Yacht Restoration. “The owner had nursed it along for a number of years and then found us to do some minor repair work to keep the boat afloat,” says Snediker. “But it was apparent at that point that the boat was going to…

Stephen Daresta had a friend who was looking for a boat. The two looked through the classifieds and searched the internet, finally making a road trip to take a look at a possibility. Itturned out to be a worthwhile venture. His friend, Frank Catalano, found and soon bought a 550 Sundancer, a 55-foot express cruiser from Sea Ray. Little did Daresta realize that he would eventually own the boat. “I had traveled with him when he came across the 550,” says Daresta, 54, an electrical engineer from the coastal village of Massapequa, New York on the southern shore of Long Island. “I, too, fell in love with it.” Fast forward a few years to when Daresta and his wife, Pat, were planning to move up from their 37-foot Formula PC.…

Try to imagine the conditions present at every single point in the world’s oceans, at every single second. On the surface. Just beneath the surface. Far beneath the surface. With a slowmoving current. With a fast-moving current. With an easterly current. With a northerly current. With a cool temperature. With a cooler temperature. With high salinity. With higher salinity. For every single point in the oceans, at every single second. “It’s a huge, huge data set,” says Thomas Peacock, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). “The ocean is so complex, you could release two floats off the side of a boat in the same location, and it’s entirely possible that they’ll end up going in different directions.” This level of complexity, of course, is…

John “Pop” Rybovich opened up his own fishing boat repair business in 1919 in West Palm Beach, Florida, and started a family. His three sons—Johnny, Tommy and Emil—grew up on the waterfront, watching anglers retrofit cabin cruisers for the new sport of deep-sea fishing, adding primitive fighting chairs, bamboo outriggers, bow pulpits, gin poles, kites and other gear. Johnny grew up as the passionate fisherman, whose time spent on the water later proved invaluable. Tommy, the tireless, learned to design and build by feel and experience. Emil, the engineer, developed a talent for detail. Together in the late 1940s, they pretty much invented the modern sportfish boat. The Rybovich 42 had the lines, design and gear that made a Rybovich a Rybovich. There’s the broken sheer, which brought the cockpit…

Dear Soundings: I go boating on the Chesapeake Bay aboard my 40-foot sportfishing boat (shown above). I’d like to improve the exterior finish and just make it look cooler. Can I add one layer of carbon fiber to the boat’s topsides? —David Avedesian, Silver Spring, Maryland It’s possible to do a carbon fiber wrap on the hull of your boat, but a better option could be a custom, high-resolution vinyl wrap printed with a carbon fiber pattern that replicates the intricate weave. Carbon fiber needs to be protected with a few layers of clear coat, which requires time, labor and expense and may not be as durable as vinyl wrap. There are many different types of vinyl wraps, from brightly colored designs to contemporary metallic shades, any of which can…

As I cleared the inlet and steered the Second Chance, a 36-foot Delta SFX, to the northeast on a flat sea under light gray skies, I was focused on the day’s mission: We would scour the sandy hills a few miles offshore of New Jersey’s Manasquan Inlet for fluke. When I shut off the Caterpillars to make our first drift I was hoping for a little wind so we could cover some ground. The morning air was breathless though, and without any momentum, our squid strip and killie combos would be easy prey for sea robins and skates before the fluke could get the chance to join in. No flatties showed up on the first couple of passes, so I moved the boat to deeper water. As the crew in…

At first glance the Serenity 64 looks like a lot of other power cats. There is a ton of space. The aft cockpit is enormous. You can take in the sun on the bow, stern and aft on the flybridge. It has a 320-square-foot salon, a large galley and four custom staterooms, plus a crew cabin. It also has shower walls covered in slate so thin it curves around the corners, but it’s the silent solarelectric propulsion system that makes this ocean-going powerboat a rare catamaran. Boyd Taylor and his wife, Elizabeth Neville, built the first Serenity 64 in 2018. Constructed in Turkey’s free-trade zone, the first hull made its world debut at Cannes, France. But earlier this year they brought the second hull to the Miami Boat Show for…

Not too long ago, you’d go to Maine for a traditional wooden boat. But nowadays the Pine Tree State can build you any boat you want. It can be big or small, production, semi-custom or custom, a rebuild, a renovation or a refit, cold-molded, steel, aluminum, fiberglass, carbon fiber or wood. Between Portland and Mount Desert Island, you’ll practically break your neck over boatyards. Seemingly every other cove still has a boatshed, and away from the water there are yards tucked among the trees. Besides production builders such as Sabre, Back Cove and Hinckley, and large yards like Hodgdons, Brooklin Boatyard, Rockport Marine, Front Street Shipyard and Lyman-Morse, there are dozens of smaller boatshops—many with just a handful of workers—that can make just about anything. Some of them build the…

In the early 1930s, in the English village of Poole, small machine shops and yards were busy making parts for an outboard engine, the British Seagull, that would win a place in history and in the hearts of those who owned one. Flywheels, gas tanks, gears, gaskets and prop shafts were then assembled in a harborside building on Poole Quay to make a single-cylinder powerplant that designer John Marston called the Marston Seagull. Soon after, engineers John Way-Hope and Bill Pinniger took over production, changed the name to British Seagull and introduced the brand’s famous advertising slogan: “The Best Outboard Motor in the World,” which was later changed to “for the World.” The basic engine was a 102-cc, 1-cylinder power plant that would change little over the years, although the…